


An Island of Our Own

by yunmin



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Ahch-To, Force Ghosts, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-30 20:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8548618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yunmin/pseuds/yunmin
Summary: “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

  “I’m coming with you.”
In which Wedge Antilles refuses to let Luke Skywalker wander off the edge of the Galaxy on his own, and goes with him to Ahch-To.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hydianway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydianway/gifts).



> Like morganalegay, I have long wanted to read (and write!) fic about Wedge managing to track Luke down and them living together on Ahch-To. I saw this exchange as a chance to write some.

Two days after the massacre at the New Jedi Temple, Wedge Antilles finds Luke Skywalker on the edge of the shore, staring out across the ocean.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

Luke turns to Wedge, his eyes focusing on his old friend. “I don’t know what else I can do.”

Wedge can think of things he could, but Luke has spent the last twenty years attempting to do what he thought was right, and it all came crashing down anyway.

“I’m coming with you.”

Luke shakes his head. “You can’t. You’ve got responsibilities here, Wedge, I won’t let you…”

He trails off. He can hardly lecture Wedge on abandoning his responsibilities when he’s doing so himself.

“I resigned,” Wedge says. That, almost more than anything else than has happened in these last few days, shocks Luke. “I won’t stand with a Republic that fails to recognise the looming threat that faces us, that has already wrecked so many lives. So.” He steps up, close to Luke, so they’re standing side by side, shoulders brushing. “I could join Leia’s Resistance. Or, I could come with you, and stop you crawling so far up your own ass in grief and Jedi mystical nonsense. I reckon I’d be better served doing the latter.”

Luke almost – not quite – cracks a smile. “Haven’t you done enough of that over the years?”

“Clearly not enough, given that you were contemplating running off on your own.”

Luke bumps his shoulder against Wedge’s. They’re roughly the same height; it’s easy to lean into him for a bit of sorely needed support. “Okay, then. If you’re sure.”

“I am.”

.

Wedge isn’t sure what he expected, but Ahch-To isn’t it.

The planet is largely ocean. Luke brings them down over a rocky-outcrop. “How long have you known about this place?” Wedge asks.

“Years.”

There are the remnants of buildings; this place was once inhabited. Wedge has no gift with the Force, but he can guess where they might be. “This is the first Jedi temple.”

Luke just nods, running his hand over the stone-work. He has an expression of reverence on his face, standing in the middle of this place. Wedge sees something else, too, an expression he recognises. This is the closest thing to a home Luke has now. This is where it all began.

“And no one else knows?”

Wedge is cautious; if Kylo Ren or the First Order do come after them, he doesn’t reckon much to his and Luke’s chances of fighting them off.

Luke umms and ahhs. “If… in the future, someone needs me. They’ll be able to find me. I left enough for that. But—” He drops to the ground, sitting neatly, in the centre of the circular room. “No one else _knows_.”

Wedge sits himself down across from Luke. “So, it’s just you and me then.”

“Yeah,” Luke says. He looks at peace with that fact. “Is that okay?”

Wedge thinks back to long nights on Rebel Bases, on missions where it was just the two of them, holed up in their ships for days on end. “Yeah, Luke, it’s okay.”

.

They spend the first nights on the ship, but they’ve both spent enough of their lives shipbound that neither wants to do it when they no longer have to. Luke might just want to sit in quiet and peaceful reflection, but there’s work to be done, building something that might be a home.

Finding somewhere that’s dry is the first priority. Some of the buildings have their roofs intact, and Wedge finds one he favours, an extension on a natural cave in the mountainside. “Unless there’s something wrong,” Wedge says. “In the Force. I can’t tell that.”

“There isn’t,” Luke replies, looking around the open space. “It's good, Wedge. Where do we start?”

Beds; that's as simply as pulling the blankets and mattresses out the ship. A table made of stone is salvaged out of one of the dwellings, and brought to theirs by way of the force. A kitchen area – they’re still surviving off rations, at the moment, but before long they’re going to have to work out how to live off the land – that goes out front.

The rain might not permeate the inside of the cave, but the cold does. Not as bad as Hoth – nowhere is as bad as Hoth, Wedge has learnt this. But on Hoth there were heaters, and communal quarters, and here Luke and Wedge have set themselves up on separate sides of the cave.

That is, until Wedge gets fed up of Luke’s chattering teeth, and lifts all the blankets off his bed and takes them over to Luke’s. “Budge over,” Wedge says, and slides into the gap that Luke leaves. Luke’s feet are cold against his, so Wedge tucks a blanket in around them, before wrapping his arms around Luke’s middle and pulling him close.

“Wedge?” Luke murmurs, voice dripping with sleep.

“I’m not having you freeze on me,” Wedge says back.

Luke seems satisfied with that answer. He doesn’t say anything else, and Wedge can feel his breath even out as he falls asleep.

.

“Is he not bored?”

Luke jolts with surprise out of his meditation, only to find his father’s force ghost sat beside him.

Anakin Skywalker doesn’t show up often, and when he does it’s usually to impart some grand piece of advice, so this is a little unusual.

Luke looks up. In his father’s eyeline is Wedge, a way down from them, tending to the garden they’ve set up. It is – as it usually is on Ahch-To – drizzling, and Wedge has stripped down to a vest that’s pretty much see-through while he works.

“I flew against him,” Anakin says, whilst Luke is distracted by strong arms and lean muscle and the way Wedge’s hair looks when it’s damp and pushed back. “He was a good pilot – one of the best, especially given that he has no talent with the force – and yet he's here with you. Farming.” Anakin shakes his head. “I’d have gone mad.”

Luke has thought about this a lot, over the months. Whenever he brings it up, Wedge swears he doesn’t mind.

“I don’t know,” Luke says. “He says it’s enough. Being with me.”

Anakin’s ghost raises his eyebrows. “Is it like that?”

Luke scrunches his face, catching his father’s implication. “No,” he says. “Not…” He looks back at Wedge, who’s paused his work, standing with his hands on his hips, rugged in a way that Luke appreciates. “Would it have been enough? If mum asked you to go away with her, leave the war and the Jedi behind, just you and her and… us, eventually?”

“I don’t know,” Anakin replies. “Padmé would have never asked. So I never had to think about it.” He stays silent for a long while. “I don’t think… we wouldn’t have been happy, like that.”

“Oh.” Luke contemplates what that means; what it says about his parents; what it says about Wedge that he is happy here.

“He could be,” Anakin says. “I didn’t think he’d be the type, but he might be.”

Anakin places a hand to his son’s shoulder. It’s – an odd feeling, weight in the force rather than the physical realm. “I shouldn’t have asked,” he says, choking out the apology. “Just… wanted to look out for you. And him. If he means so much that you’d bring him here…”

“He insisted.”

“… then he’s important to me.”

Luke momentarily wonders what Wedge would make of all this. “Thanks. I think,” is all he manages to summon.

His father sits besides him for a couple more minutes, then disappears on a strong gust of wind, leaving Luke alone again, contemplating Wedge.

.

On the first year after the attack, Luke wakes in a cold sweat.

It feels so real, all of it; he can feel the water pounding around him and his feet sinking into the mud and the red blaze of that lightsaber and he can barely breathe in memory, the Force shrieking wrongness back at him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Wedge asks, lying beside him. They’re still sleeping in the same bed, though it’s now made up of both mattresses pushed together, and they don’t usually wake up tangled in each other’s arms.

(They do, occasionally; it’s not something of consequence. They just brush it off. They’re comfortable enough now with the realities of living together in close quarters. Sometimes they see more of each other than they should. Sometimes they touch more than they should. They’ve yet to reach a point where they need to talk about it.)

“No,” Luke replies, turning to face Wedge.

Wedge’s hair has a lot of grey in it now, no longer raven-black. Luke knows that his own hair is turning too. There are lines on Wedge’s face; some the markers of age, others those of grief. Luke doesn’t want to add to his burdens.

“Okay,” Wedge says. “If you ever do want to…” He trails off, uncertain in this nighttime hour. “I’m here.”

“I know.” Luke edges a little closer to Wedge, seeks for one of his hands underneath all the blankets. He finds one, and intertwines their fingers together. “Thank you. For being here. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Wedge’s cheeks colour a little, and he averts his eyes, not daring to look at Luke directly.

“I mean it,” Luke says.

One of Wedge’s feet brushes his, and Wedge’s voice is soft and a little bashful as he replies: “I like being here with you too.”

.

On day four hundred and eleven on Ahch-To, Luke is investigating some of the writings left behind in the temple when he feels a disturbance in the Force, a shock of terror and then of pain.

It’s local. It’s Wedge, it has to be. He’d left that morning, saying he was going foraging. Something must have happened.

Luke traces Wedge’s steps, coming up on a large, sheer cliff face. And then, at the bottom—

“Luke?” Wedge calls, voice thin and laced with pain.

“I’m here,” Luke responds, raising his voice so Wedge can hear it. “How are you doing? What happened?”

“Slipped,” Wedge replies. “Ankle’s… well, I don’t think it’s broken, but it’s busted in some way. I can’t climb out of here on my own.”

Luke contemplates exactly how he’s going to get Wedge out of this. He could climb down – it’s unlikely that he’d get himself stuck, but he’s not sure it would actually help Wedge at all.

“Do you trust me?” Luke asks.

“What sort of question is that?” Wedge replies. Then, realising that’s not an answer, adds: “Yes. Of course. Honestly, Luke, don’t you—” Wedge’s voice cuts off in surprise when he feels himself lifted up by the Force. “Oh, okay. You could have warned me.”

Luke’s too busy concentrating on not dropping Wedge and guiding him down to Luke’s side to formulate a response. When he does so, he’s more concerned about Wedge’s injuries. “Do you think you can walk?” Luke asks, wrapping Wedge’s arm around his shoulder, and helping him to his feet.

“Probably?” Wedge takes a couple of steps, grimacing as he does so.

“That’s a no,” Luke says, sweeping Wedge up in his arms. He’s not heavy, though it takes a moment to balance him, and for Wedge to settle in his grasp.

“I could,” Wedge protests, but there’s little force behind it, as he ducks his head into Luke’s shoulder, arms circled around Luke’s neck.

“I know,” Luke replies, starting the long walk back to the temple. “But you don’t have to.”

.

“Luke?”

Wedge’s voice holds a note of concern, as Luke shakes himself out of his thinking, to find Wedge standing beside him with two cups in his hands. The month or so when Wedge was laid up in bed with a damaged ankle is long past, but the memories remain, and sometimes Luke is struck with surprise to see Wedge up and walking.

“Wedge?”

“You haven’t moved in twenty-four hours,” Wedge says, simply, sitting besides him and handing one of the cups over. It’s warm, and full of the tea-like infusion they’ve taken to drinking.

They haven’t had caf in a long while.

“Oh.” Luke feels how stiff his limbs are and supposes that might be right. “I got caught up in this.”

He gestures to what’s in front of him, and Wedge, predictably, goes: “What exactly is this?”

“It’s…” Luke attempts to put it into words, what he’s discovered, the realisations he’s made. Wedge isn’t a Force user, can’t operate on the level of understanding he’s just unlocked – not any fault of his, just a fact that Luke is going to have to work around. “Early. The First. They saw the Force through each other. This whole, no attachments thing that the Order preached; it was the exact opposite of how the Force had been discovered.”

“You never held with that bit of the code,” Wedge says, quietly.

“No,” Luke says. “I didn't.”

“And yet you never had anyone.”

Luke looks over to Wedge, slightly startled. “I never… it wasn't the right time, or…” Wedge’s face is inscrutable, and Luke can’t tell where he’s going with this. “There were people I wanted, I guess. It just never worked out.”

Besides, Wedge is a fine one to talk; he’s had his dalliances over the years, but despite being a man who is built for long-term relationships, he’s never really had one of any note.

“And now?”

Luke studies Wedge. Is he asking what Luke thinks he’s asking?

“Who’d want a damaged man like me?”

Luke waits for Wedge to respond. To tell him that he isn’t damaged, or that someone would want him anyway, or that Wedge wants him… anything.

Wedge doesn’t say anything.

.

Luke pushes the soil down around one of the growing plants with perhaps more aggression that is necessary.

Wedge hadn’t said anything. He could have. But he’d just sat in silence, and after enough time, Luke had made his excuses, and fled. Which perhaps had not been his brightest idea. Because, thinking back, he’d left things woefully unclear. There’s been an understanding between them so long now, an easy one, born of long years living around each other, here on Ahch-To and before as pilots.

Luke wonders whether he’s just upset that. Did he push to far, or not far enough? Was Wedge wanting something more overt – thinking back, what Luke had thought was an invitation hadn’t been clear at all, but neither had Wedge’s comment that preceded it.

Luke swallows his pride. He’s going to go and find Wedge. Attempt to say something which conveys just how much Wedge’s presence means to him.

Luke looks around the temple grounds, but cannot find the other man anywhere. Luke supposes he could have taken a long walk, but he does have a frantic moment where he checks that the ship to see that it’s still there.

It is. Still no sign of Wedge. Luke reaches out in the Force. Wedge is… he’s wandering. Likely will be for some time. That’s okay.

Luke suddenly becomes aware of just how tired he is. Which makes sense. He didn’t sleep at all last night. Too distracted by discoveries in the Force.

He goes back to their bed. Strips off his robes, tossing them in the corner, then crawls into the pile of blankets. He ends up on Wedge’s side of the bed, with Wedge’s pillow.

It’s comforting.

It doesn’t help to starve off the want that’s shaken itself out of a long buried place in Luke’s chest.

.

When Luke wakes, he finds Wedge sitting across the room, quietly watching him.

He’s huddled up in a chunky woollen jumper, hugging his arms around his legs, and his gaze is focused, but contemplative.

Luke sits up, slowly, letting the blankets pool around his waist. That leaves his chest bare, and Luke notes the way Wedge’s eyes rake across it, a spark of heat present in them.

Oh. It is like that.

That’s a relief. He catches a feeling of intent, suddenly, in the Force; this isn’t the first time Wedge has looked at him like this. Not by far. Which, is good, because Luke has been looking across at dark eyes and greying floppy hair and that mouth which works a scowl as well as it does a smile for a while now, and found desire in all of it.

“You asked…” Wedge starts, his words a little tentative. “Who’d want a damaged man like you. I assumed you were talking in the abstract. But you weren’t. Were you?”

“No,” Luke replies. “I wasn’t.”

“Okay.” Wedge swallows and his throat bobs and Luke is watching all the while, waiting for Wedge to say what he needs to. “Me,” he says, very quiet; so quiet Luke can barely hear him. “It’s me,” he repeats, a little louder. “I want you. If you want me too.”

“I do,” Luke responds, cutting off Wedge’s uncertainty.

The declaration hangs in the air between them. They’re still on opposite sides of the room.

“What…?” Wedge voices, letting his vice-like grip on himself drop. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” Luke replies. This is uncharted space, for both of them. “Come here?” he suggests, patting the empty side of the bed.

Wedge does so. Luke leans over, cupping the edge of Wedge’s jaw, running his thumb over Wedge’s cheekbone. Wedge places one of his hands on Luke’s chest, fingers feeling their way across it and then up to stroke Luke’s shoulder. After a while, his hand settles on Luke’s bicep. They stare at each other for long moments, gradually inching towards each other, before Wedge closes the distance and presses a chaste kiss to Luke’s lips.

“I’m not sure about the beard,” Wedge mutters, but that doesn’t stop him gasping and licking into Luke’s mouth when Luke pulls him in for a proper kiss. He tangles his hand in Luke’s hair and keeps him close. “Okay,” he says, when they pull apart. “Actually, I think I could get used to it. Again?”

Luke grins, and leans back in.

.

Mornings on Ahch-To are always beautiful; Luke enjoys getting up to watch them, seeing the sun break over the endless waves of water.

Wedge does not. He stays in bed, catching another couple of hours sleep. It used to be that, after watching the dawn break, Luke would spend a couple of hours meditating and wait for Wedge to come find him with breakfast.

Now, he tends to see the dawn, breathe for five minutes, centre himself in the Force, then… go back, to bed, with Wedge, who takes Luke into his arms.

“You’re cold,” Wedge complains, as he does almost every morning, but that doesn’t stop him from wrapping himself around Luke. There’s a kiss; a long, languid one, that ends with Wedge on top of Luke, a hand splayed across Luke’s chest.

There’s a dull ache of arousal, but it isn’t pressing. They’re not as young as they once were; not old, by any means, but they’re grown used to having time.

There’s no urgency about any of this.

“Is this something you wanted? When we were younger, I mean?”

Wedge looks up at Luke, distracted from the line of kisses he’d been busy pressing into the side of Luke’s neck.

“Do you remember Yavin?” Wedge asks, slightly dumbfounded. “Everyone wanted you. I wasn’t exactly immune to that. But I realised pretty quickly that it was just a stupid crush, and you needed me to be your friend more than anything else.” He strokes his hand across Luke’s chest, then across the soft skin of Luke’s belly, and Luke trembles in response. “What about you?”

“After Endor,” Luke says. “I guess. Before, a bit, as well. But the moment I’d started seriously thinking about it, you and Norra had happened… so I put it aside. I… It was never a priority for me, as you said. I never wanted for a relationship.”

“I didn’t come with you because of this,” Wedge clarifies, as Luke places a kiss to his jawline.

“I never thought you did,” Luke replies.

He rolls over, taking Wedge with him and pinning him down to the mattress. Wedge laughs, the sound sweet. “I’m not complaining about the results, though.”

“Good,” Luke says, before grabbing Wedge’s wrists and holding them down and kissing him once again.

.

Wedge comes back up the steps, lugging a bag of firewood on his back and a basket full of foraged fruit in his arms, to find Luke collapsed.

He runs to his love, fearing the worst. “Luke.” He feels for a pulse. That’s there and it’s strong and Wedge breathes deep in relief. “Luke, what happened?”

“Alderaan,” is all Luke manages to say. “It’s Alderaan, all over again.”

Wedge can only tug Luke into his lap and hold him close. Surely that can’t be? Who’d do such a thing?

… Dimly, he realises that he knows exactly who would; the entire reason that they’re on this rainy, damp little planet

“What do we do?” Wedge asks, later, when Luke can stand straight again, no longer bowled over by the thousands of souls screaming in the Force. “We’ve got to fight this thing, haven’t we?”

“That’s already being done,” Luke says. “What use does the Resistance have for two men too old to fight this war?”

Wedge would protest, but he knows it’s true; he’s in no shape to fight. Not anymore. The time has long since passed to pass the baton to someone else.

“There’s been an awakening,” Luke says, cryptically. “And it’ll head our way before too long. All we can do is wait.”

.

There’s a girl standing in front of Luke, and she’s holding Luke’s old lightsaber, and he’s not saying anything.

“Hello,” Wedge says, after a while observing. The girl’s eyes turn to him; she’d not noticed him appear. “Do you want to get out of the rain and the cold? I can get some tea on. Luke?”

Luke finally moves, reaching out to take the lightsaber from the girl. He turns it over in his hands once, then hands it back to her. “This is yours now,” he says.

“Oh,” she says, folding her hands over it. Then she looks to Wedge, raising an eyebrow. “Who are you?”

“I’m Wedge,” he says. “Come on. I expect you’ve got a story and a half to tell.”

She nods.

Wedge reaches for Luke’s hand. He has no idea what lies ahead for them. Not the quiet life that they’ve had for the past several years. But now: they face it together.

The girl looks at their clasped hands. It surprises her. But she doesn’t say anything about that. Just this: “My name is Rey. Leia Organa sent me.”


End file.
